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304wounded in a violent attack (like wolves), and some pretend they are already dead(capybara).Screaming by a big group is more effective than individual screaming, and wellorganizedloud noise can stop even the king of the African savannah. We all know aboutthe “beat” method of hunting when the loud shouting and noise of an unarmed humangroup can scare and direct large and strong animals towards the intended spot, push themover a cliff, or just drive them out of the proximity of human territory. Even today, if astray lion comes close to an African village, group shouting is the first means of shooingit away.Despite the immense importance of safety issues in our contemporary westernsociety (where safety standards are the highest in human history), this issue has not beenadequately investigated in relation to our distant ancestors (where safety was at thelowest possible level). “Although predation has long been thought to explain theevolution of alarm calls (e.g. Maynard-Smith, 1965) the effect of predation on theevolution of other call types has not been well investigated” (Uster & Zuberbuhler,2001:742). What I am going to do next is to talk in more detail about the evolution of the“other call type”, connected to strategies for safety from predation.When our ancestors were colonizing the ground, searching for food, or masteringtheir first stone tools, they could not do this is the safety of well-protected houses, shopsand workshops. Any moment of the day they were vulnerable to fatal attacks by bigpredators. These times are now gone for good, and are apparently forgotten. This must bereason why, although food-searching, hunting and sexual behavior and strategies ofhominids and early humans had been among the favorite topics of countless publications,the surviving strategies of our ancestors have not received sufficient attention. At thesame time studies of primates show that they spend more time in scanning for predatorsthan in searching for food.Any tree-dwelling primate is in mortal danger while staying on a ground for sometime. They can more easily become prey on the ground. So, as soon as primates noticepredators, they rush back into the trees. Our ancestors were in a highly vulnerablesituation on the African ground after they moved there. Trees were not around in amoment of danger, and they were not good runners like antelopes, able to outrunpredators. Group defence seems to be the only viable option our grandmothers andgrandfathers had about some 200 000 generations ago.Talking about safety measures of our distant relatives, particularly interesting andimportant in this context is the notion of “well-organized loud noise” I mentioned above.Let us remember what I said a couple of pages ago: although creating elaborate melodiesand singing long songs is not only a human prerogative (as I have already mentioned,whales and avian birds can beat us at melodic inventiveness), group singing with aprecise rhythmic pattern, uniting all participants, is a characteristic of humanbehavior.So, I am suggesting that “rhythmically well-organized loud noise”, or thepredecessor of human choral singing, was initially established as a safety measureagainst the big ground predators of the African savannah.Safety measures against predation were crucially important for early humans.Unlike us, our ancestors were not “on the top of the food chain”, and they had to takevery strict measures to survive. Of course, they needed time to stay together as a social